


Measure In Love

by Buffintruder



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Prank Wars, Spiders, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, a dozen different kinds of love, a sprinkling of dramatic irony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 12:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17022303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruder/pseuds/Buffintruder
Summary: How do you measure a year?13 snapshots from one cycle in the Stolen Century





	Measure In Love

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the song Seasons of Love from Rent  
> Minor warning for a bit of gore, more detail in the end notes

**minutes**

“Hey, Magnus?” Taako said, once everyone’s bodies had finished reforming on board the Starblaster. “Remember when we were arguing over who has better perception?”

“Of course,” Magnus said, rubbing at the black eye he always forgot he had at the start of each cycle. The argument had only been last week, and with the pressure of the Hunger’s arrival looming over them, it had grown more heated than such a trivial subject had the right to be. There was no way he was forgetting it that quickly.

“Oh, come on,” Merle grumbled in the background. “Is that still going on?”

“Well, why don’t I prove to you once and for all who’s right,” Taako said, staring Magnus dead in the eyes. He raised an eyebrow challengingly. “Whoever spots the first sign of civilization on the Material Plane wins the argument.”

“Hell yeah,” Magnus said, the competitive spirit in him perking up in interest. “I bet you ten carved figures of your choice that I’ll win.”

“And I’ll match that with ten Taako-made meals,” Taako shot back immediately. “Not that it’ll be happening. I have night vision  _ and _ magic. You don’t stand a chance.”

“Sure, sure,” Magnus drawled, smirking slightly. “Bring it on!”

“In fact, let’s time it,” Taako said, pulling out a stopwatch from his armpit pocket as Lup rolled her eyes next to him. “That way we can see exactly how badly I crush you.”

“Uhuh. I won’t be carving you anything!” Magnus scoffed, even though he knew it was a poor comeback. He enjoyed whittling as a hobby, and he liked Taako, so he would have gladly carved Taako a hundred trinkets if he wanted them. But it was the principle of the thing.

“We’ll see about that,” Taako muttered, as Davenport directed the ship toward the prime material plane.

It took exactly twenty three minutes for Magnus to spot a small shack at the edge of a clearing. He spent another two minutes doing a victory dance in the common room while Taako sulked and Lup laughed at both of them.

“Whatever,” Taako pouted. “What a waste of some perfectly good minutes of my life. It’s not like I could do anything with ten fake ducks. At least you get some fucking delicious food out of this.”

“Hell yeah I do!” Magnus crowed.

Taako rolled his eyes and left the common room. Magnus was pretty sure Taako was just exaggerating his unhappiness at his defeat, but Magnus felt a twinge of worry anyway. He hadn’t meant to hurt Taako’s pride or anything.

With nothing better to do, Magnus headed back to his room, his joy at winning the bet only slightly dented. He stared out the porthole for awhile, watching mountains and seas drift by below him. Every once in awhile, there would be a few buildings clustered together. Seeing the world like this, so tiny but detailed, would be peaceful if there wasn’t a nagging anxiety tugging at his heart, telling him that the fate of every single living being he glimpsed rested in his hands. 

A little while later, Taako emerged from the kitchen, kicked open Magnus’s door and dropped a plate of noodles covered in a thick sauce onto the bed.

It was one of Magnus’s favorite foods, and even though he hadn't felt hungry before Taako entered, the smell made his stomach growl. When Magnus took a closer look, he realized that it was arranged so the sauce formed a dome-shaped brown blob with long strands of noodle peeking out of the bottom like tentacles.

“It’s Fisher!” Magnus gasped, overcome with delight.

“Yeah, it is,” Taako said. Magnus looked up at him to see him fighting off a pleased smirk. “It seemed like the dumb sort of thing you’d like.”

“This is the most amazing thing I will eat in my life,” Magnus said solemnly.

This time, Taako didn’t even try to hide the smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “It better be,” he said loftily before flouncing out of the room.

 

**moments so dear**

Before joining the IPRE, Barry Bluejeans had been a fairly lonely person. He had friends and datemates and parents, but none of them had been all that close. There had never been anybody he would give his life up for without a moment’s consideration, no one he would tell his deepest secrets to.

If there was one thing he appreciated about this journey, it was the family it had given him. 

Barry hadn’t expected Lup and Taako to be the people he would become the closest to when he first joined the crew of the Starblaster. Their surface-level interests and backgrounds were so different from his that he hadn’t guessed that they could share so much as well.

Of course, back then Barry had also expected their journey to be two months long, not the ninety-some years that it had been so far, so he clearly hadn’t known as much as he thought he did about anything.

Decades passed in which all of them grew closer together and created acres of common ground. Despite their shared land, they also kept their many of their own individual plots, but honestly Barry infinitely preferred it that way.

Not all differences could be brushed over. Taako saw denim shirts as a crime against fashion, and Lup thought of them as uncomfortable to wear, but Barry liked them a lot. Barry’s prefered room temperature was about three degrees colder than the twins. Lup thought a standard meal should hold about twice as much sugar as the other two. 

And Barry wasn’t the same species as Taako and Lup.

The fact was, Lup was an elf, and elves didn’t need to sleep like humans did. They could if they wanted to, and Taako often did, but Lup never slept unless her twin was there. It was something that had probably developed in her childhood, Barry figured.

In previous relationships, one of the parts Barry enjoyed most was literally sleeping with his partners, and not doing so had been a strange adjustment to make at first. 

He didn't feel like it was much of a loss, though; he never got to learn an animal language on an alien world with past partners or turn into liches together and blast fire at a corrupted planar system, and those were far cooler. Everything had its pros and cons, and the pros of his relationship with Lup outweighed the cons more than a black hole outweighed a cell.

Still, the rare times (often after exhausting days) when Lup, Taako, and him all piled into one bed and slept were among the moments he treasured the most.

Barry wasn’t sure why his bed was full this morning since he had gone to sleep alone earlier that night and the most strenuous thing they did the day before was ask a few villagers if they had spotted the Light. (They hadn’t). It was very unusual, but he certainly wasn’t complaining.

Curled next to him, Lup was still asleep, judging by her slow, soft breathing. Barry could only kind of see Taako on her other side, but he assumed that he was also sleeping. Taako tended not to be awake in the morning if he didn’t have to be, especially when he was trying to procrastinate holding up his end of his bet with Magnus.

Barry looked at them and felt his insides curl up with affection. He loved all the IPRE with all his heart, but Lup and Taako felt more like home than anybody else ever had. These softer moments, when Barry wasn’t doing something spectacularly dumb in the name of science, when Lup wasn’t setting anything on fire, when Taako wasn’t casting some new impossible spell, when none of them were being as dramatic as they possibly could, these were the moments that Barry held dearest.

He was safe and loved and utterly at peace in this quiet morning; there was nothing more he could ask of the world right now. He closed his eyes again and scooted closer to Lup.

 

**in daylights**

“Uh, Cap’nport?” Taako squeezed past a couple strangers, glancing over the crowd once more for any sign of trouble before tugging both himself and Davenport behind the edge of a food vendor’s stall. Sheltered by thick shadows, it would be hard for anyone out in the glaring sunlight to spot them.

“What’s going on?” Davenport asked, his eyebrows scrunched together in concern as he pulled his arm from Taako’s grasp.

“There’s... a bit of a commotion. Thought I’d warn you.”

Davenport sighed. “What have you gotten yourself into this time?”

After all the decades they had spent together, there was no point in trying to hide his wrongdoing, Taako figured, so he didn’t bother. Instead, he pulled his long flowing skirt up to knee length, revealing a pair of jeweled statues strapped to each calf. As soon as Davenport had gotten a glimpse, he lowered them again, carefully looking out of the corner of his eyes to try and gage if anybody had seen him.

“Those better not be the Sacred Statues I see there,” Davenport said. When Taako didn’t reply, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me you have a good reason for this.”

“Money?” Taako offered, not entirely sure why he was obscuring the truth with a pettier persona. “I ran into some people running a heist and felt like joining in?”

“Taako...” Davenport groaned. “You planned this ahead of time, didn’t you. I should’ve suspected something was up when you went out in public in Lucretia’s skirt.”

Taako shrugged. It wasn’t normally his style of clothing, but he had to admit that it was very good for concealing stolen objects.

“Is Lup involved as well?”

“Nah, she had some business to take care of,” Taako said. “She found some astronomy club at the university. I think she’s trying to figure out if they saw the Light fall.”

“Right.” Davenport stepped out from under the shadow of the stall. “We’re coming out of here, and you’re going to put those items back where you found them.”

“No way,” Taako said flatly. “I think one of the guards got a glimpse of my face. I’d be thrown in jail if I try to get within twenty meters of them!”

“Fine,” Davenport said, not missing a beat. “Then give them to me, and I’ll bring them back.”

“I can’t!”

“Oh?” Davenport crossed his arms and looked back at Taako. “Why is that?”

Taako scanned the area around them, but nobody was paying them much attention, too busy with their buying and selling. He poked his head out close to Davenport’s and in a quiet voice said, “This kingdom stole them first.”

“What?” Davenport asked, but he leaned back into the shadows, out of eyesight from the crowd.

“The kingdom stole the statues,” Taako repeated. “Some people in a small town made them, and instead of paying for them, the king just took them, and now the town’s economy is suffering.”

“Oh,” Davenport said. Taako waited for Davenport to say something else, to make the judgement that would save or ruin the heist. Davenport’s face revealed nothing. “And you wanted to help them steal the statues back?”

“They’re also paying me,” Taako added quickly. “I wasn’t lying about that part.”

“Why did they turn to  _ you _ for this?” Davenport asked. “How did you even meet them?”

“You probably don’t want to know,” Taako said. It involved him trying to steal from them first, which sort of ruined the hero vibe he was currently giving off.

Davenport snorted. “I probably don’t.”

Someone across the street shouted something, and everybody else went quiet. Taako looked out around the corner of the stall, ducking his head back in as soon as he did. He hadn’t been able to catch a whole lot, but he had seen the bright yellow uniform of the law enforcement. They weren’t looking in his direction, but if he didn’t get out quick, that could change.

“Right, if you aren’t going to stop me, I think it’s about time I got going,” Taako said. 

He could probably use Blink to get out of there without being seen. In his home plane, using such a spell would have set off a dozen alarms set to detect magic that could be used for thievery, but he didn’t know if there were alarms like that in this place. Without any other option, it seemed like he would have to risk it.

“No, I think you’re fine,” Davenport said calmly.

“But—” Taako started, pointing to the guards swarming into their section of the market. As he lifted his hand, however, he noticed that it didn’t look like it always did. It was stumpier, less elegant and smooth. “What—”

“They won’t notice us like this,” Davenport said, confidently stepping back out into the street.

Taako looked down to see that his clothes had changed, different colors and patterns draping themselves differently around the lines and angles of his body that he had gotten so used to in the past few centuries. He reached up to feel his face.

“Don’t do that,” Davenport said. “I didn’t physically change anything. You’ll mess up the illusion if part of your finger is overlapping your nose.”

Taako grinned. “Dude, we have to bring you along on cons more often! We could get away with pulling so much stuff off in broad daylight!”

Davenport smiled slightly. “I think I’ll just stick to the one.”

 

**in sunsets**

The sky was clear, with just enough clouds to add some texture to the otherwise blank expanse. It had been a hot day, but now as it neared its end, the air was starting to cool. 

Davenport had nothing he needed to do, so he grabbed a book, a glass, and a bottle of wine (not his best kind, he had learned  _ that _ lesson the hard way) and set out to the western-facing cliff edge about half a mile away from the Starblaster. The sunsets in this cycle were the perfect backdrop to a relaxing evening.

To his surprise, when he reached the cliff, someone was already there. He could only see their back, but judging by the short stature and wild hair, it was Merle.

Davenport glanced over at him as he sat down, slipping his legs over the edge of the cliff to let them dangle. Merle didn't even turn his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the horizon.

After all these cycles, Davenport had gotten very good at noticing when someone was missing their home world. There was a certain wistful expression that was somehow always recognizable, despite the differences in the way each IPRE member expressed their emotions. Magnus wore it the most—he had left a few family members behind in their homeworld—and the twins the least, but he had seen every one of his crew with that expression.

The times Davenport saw this expression lessened the farther along their journey they went, and these days, he rarely saw it at all. Still, it did show up again every now and then, and Davenport could see it on Merle right then.

Davenport set his glass off to the side—a single wine glass wasn’t very conducive to sharing a drink—and uncorked the bottle.

At the popping sound, Merle finally looked over at Davenport, the vaguely nostalgic look vanishing in a heartbeat. “You came here to party!”

Instead of bothering to dignify that with a response, Davenport merely handed the bottle over and watched Merle take a large swig before passing it back.

“Let’s see,” Merle said, rubbing his beard in exaggerated contemplation. “We have you, a bottle of wine, and me—a dwarf with 1999 party points. I’m thinking a drinking game.”

“A drinking game?” Davenport echoed. He had come here for an evening of peace and quiet, not excitement or noise. With Merle, it was approximately 50/50 these days on which one he could hope for in a situation like this, and it appeared that the coin of luck had landed on the wrong side for Davenport.

“Hmm, truth or dare? Never have I ever?” Merle asked. “Oh! What about spin the bottle?”

“Merle, there’s only two of us,” Davenport pointed out.

Merle waggled his eyebrows. “That’s what makes it fun.”

“If you wanted to make out with me, you could have just asked,” Davenport said flatly, just to watch Merle blink, losing his composure for half a second, before covering it back up with a grin.

“Is that an offer?”

“I actually came here for some time to myself,” Davenport said. He drew his legs back from over the edge of the cliff, preparing to stand up and move somewhere else.

“No, no, don’t go. I’ll be quiet,” Merle said, grabbing the bottom of Davenport’s jacket. “The sunset’s too nice to miss.”

Satisfied that Merle had dropped his rowdier persona, Davenport swung his legs back out over the edge. He took a sip from his bottle, allowing himself to focus on the brilliant skies in front of him. Black silhouettes of trees and rock formations contrasted sharply against the red glow behind them. “You didn’t get sunsets like this back home.”

The atmosphere there hadn’t been good for such vibrant colors, and the extra sun often got in the way of the dramatic switch between full brightness to full darkness.

“Yeah,” Merle said softly, and then they were both quiet for a while as the red faded to violet then indigo. The bottle of wine passed from Davenport’s hands to Merle’s, back and forth and back and forth until it was nearly empty.

The first stars had begun to come out when Davenport broke the silence. “Do you still miss home?”

It took Merle half a second to consider the question. “Yes, but this is my home now.” He nodded back behind him in the direction of the Starblaster. “All of you are my home. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You?”

“Yeah,” Davenport said, but as much as he enjoyed this quiet evening that he never would have gotten to share with Merle back on their planet, he couldn’t allow himself to believe that it was somehow worth it. Even after all these years, his soul longed for home. Still, he didn’t want to bring down the mood. “I’m glad I’m in this with all of you.” 

That much at least was true. There was no other group of people Davenport would rather face a century of fleeing the Hunger with.

“I’ll drink to that,” Merle said.

 

**in midnights**

“I’ll rise again and I’ll rule the world!” Taako hissed, raising his hands dramatically as he stepped into the beam of the flashlight they had attached to the ceiling for precisely this sort of effect.

Perhaps because it was nearly midnight and both of them were a bit tipsy, Lucretia found this over-the-top show incredibly funny, her laughter causing Taako to break his serious face and giggle a little too.

The two of them had been left alone overnight on the Starblaster with nothing to do, so Lucretia tossed out the suggestion of a two person amateur production of A Fantasy Very Potter Musical. A few decades had passed since the cycle they had seen it in, but their enthusiasm and memory of it were no less strong, and before she knew it, they were halfway through the first act.

Playing the role of Quirrell, Lucretia exchanged a few pieces of sung dialogue about helping him rule the world, aiming more for comical exaggeration than sincerity. She didn't think she could play a convincing evil sidekick, even if she wanted to.

They both jumped into the chorus, each trying to dance in sync, since their characters were supposed to be sharing a body right now. Taako poorly mimicked anything Lucretia did, and she kept tripping over her feet, so it was a bit of a disaster.

“I think it's plain to see when you look at you and me!” Both of them went up for the harmony on the last two words, and immediately glared at each other. Quirrell was the one who went higher there, so Lucretia was definitely the one supposed to be doing it.

“We're different, different as can be!”

They weren't really all that different, Lucretia reflected. She and Taako had many of the same qualities; they just manifested in very different ways.

But that was hardly in character, so she drew on memories of her more timid pre-IPRE self to sing about her love of Fantasy Jane Austin while Taako seemed to be having a blast hissing every word he could. Lucretia put away thoughts of herself and became lost the characters she was pretending to be.

It wasn’t until she was playing Dumbledore later on, with Taako being Harry, that Lucretia resurfaced.

“I love you,” she said, and it was supposed to be in character, but for a moment, her feelings were not of a mentor figure to some little kid; they were of a more equal footing, of friends who had lived and died together for so long that their life before had faded to an almost unreal dream.

“I know,” Taako said, flipping his hair in a clear attempt to act casual. But Lucretia caught the half-second falter before he said that line that wasn’t even in the script, his tiny smile that he couldn’t quite hide. “I love you too.”

This line was supposed to be said by Harry, so it wasn't entirely Taako saying it. Still, Lucretia knew that just because it was scripted didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

 

**in cups of coffee**

The moment that Lucretia and five of the other IPRE members returned to the Starblaster, she rushed to her desk to begin chronicling all the adventures they had before she could forget any details.

They had spent the day in a city below, splitting up to more efficiently search for any sign of the Light. They hadn’t found anything, but all of their experiences made for interesting tales, ranging from Barry almost getting into a fist fight with a giant to Merle accidentally uncovering a cult.

Smiling over the antics of her family and puzzling over how to describe the strange customs and culture of this society, Lucretia became so engrossed in her writing that she didn’t realize how late it had gotten until a cup of coffee was plunked onto the desk in front of her, right between the two books she was writing in.

Lucretia tore her eyes away from her writing, blinking a couple of times as she stared uncomprehendingly at the steam spiralling up from the murky liquid. Her mind still echoed with thoughts of an alleyway chase, and it took her an embarrassingly long time to look around to see who had placed the coffee in front of her.

Merle stood to her left, waiting patiently until Lucretia noticed him. She glanced down at the coffee again, then back at him.

“I... uh, thank you,” Lucretia finally managed, setting her quills back in their inkwells.

He smiled at her. “It’s no problem. You seemed busy tonight.”

“Yes, well, I want to get all this down before I forget any of it,” Lucretia said, gesturing at her books. Her hands were cramping from writing for so long, but she hadn’t realized it until just now. Holding back a wince, she began rubbing the bit of skin between her thumbs and index fingers and opening and closing her fist.

Merle nodded sagely. “I considered telling you to get some sleep, but I doubt that would have done any good.”

“Yeah, it probably wouldn't have,” Lucretia said. She took her duties as chronicler very seriously, even though it had been nearly a century since the society she had been planning on bringing the stories back to had been lost.

Lucretia reached out for the cup Merle had given her and took a sip. It was perfect in every way, from the flavor to the amount of milk and sugar (just a hint of the first and quite a bit of the second), and even the temperature it was at. “This is wonderful, Merle. Thank you.”

“Just a little something to help you with your work,” Merle said cheerfully. “I put it in one of those ever-warming mugs Lup picked up last cycle, so it shouldn’t get cold.”

“You are the best,” Lucretia said in awe. She wouldn’t even have to worry about throwing gross coffee away if she got too distracted.

“And don’t you forget it.” Merle reached up to pat her arm affectionately. “Don’t work yourself too hard, Creesh.”

“I won’t,” Lucretia promised, smiling gratefully at Merle.

 

**in inches**

“Hey, Luc,” Barry called out from where he was kneeling on the dock next to where the Starblaster was anchored.

This city, the second one they had found on this world, was on the edge of a large freshwater lake that was well known for the number of rivers that fed into and out of it. The easiest place to park the Starblaster had been in one of the ports, despite Davenport’s insistence that “it wasn’t that kind of ship.”

Currently, Barry was staring at the weird oval blob he had fished out of the water a few minutes before. It was small, flat, grayish, and almost seemed to be made of gelatin. Barry couldn't tell much else about it.

“Hello, Barry,” Lucretia said as she climbed over the edge of the Starblaster’s deck.

“Are you busy?” he asked.

“Not with anything that can’t wait,” Lucretia replied. “Why?

“Because I found something pretty interesting.”

Barry heard the gentle clomp of her boots as she approached him, and a moment later, she sat down next to him.

“What is that?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Barry said. “It looks familiar, doesn’t it? I just can’t quite place it.”

The blob was definitely similar to something he had seen before, but it also looked kind of wrong somehow, like it wasn’t quite the same as whatever this reminded him of. He watched as the bubble-like things inside continued swirling around in circles. It was almost entrancing.

“Is it alive?” Glancing up, Barry could see that Lucretia was frowning thoughtfully. “It’s moving a little.”

“I think so,” Barry said. “It wiggled around a little bit at first when I pulled it out of the lake. Especially the stuff that looks like hair on the edges.”

Lucretia leaned in to take a closer look. “I know I’ve seen something like this before, but it doesn’t look like any animal or plant I can think of.”

“Maybe it’s something else then,” Barry said. There were living things that didn’t fit in the plant or animal category, though the thing in front of him didn’t exactly look like a fungus either.

“Oh!” Lucretia snapped her fingers. “Remember cycle 5?”

“Which one was that again?” Barry’s mind was completely blank. He knew it wasn't the animal cycle, but he couldn't remember any of the other early ones at the moment.

“There was a very science-focused society there. We visited a super advanced laboratory there and got to spend a few days learning from them.”

“I don’t really remember the cycle, but I do think I know the laboratory you’re talking about.” Or at least he remembered one laboratory from early on in their journey, and Barry was pretty sure that there weren’t that many places he could get it mixed up with.

“They used a spell to see small things.”

Barry sat up straight, the reminder tugging out the memory of squinting through a tube to see a very similar creature. “Oh! The—what were they called? The things in the water. Paramecia.”

“Yes, that’s what they were!” Lucretia said. “This one is incredibly big though. We couldn’t see the paramecia without spells.”

“Lots of things in this cycle are bigger than what we’re used to, but I don’t think the scale has ever been quite as big as in this case,” Barry said. He pulled a ruler out of his pocket and lined it up next to the paramecium. “Three inches long. That’s... I think that makes it a few hundred times bigger in this cycle than the paramecia in cycle 5.”

Lucretia raised an eyebrow, impressed. “We're lucky that we haven't run into any spiders. Magnus would be terrified.”

Barry snorted, quickly making some calculations. “If the spiders were increased by the same scale, the small ones would be probably about 10 to 20 feet long.”

Lucretia shuddered. “I know this kind of thing tends to be negatively exponential, so the big spiders here probably aren't actually that big, but I certainly hope we don't meet any of them.”

“You can say that again,” Barry said, picturing giant mandibles snapping above him and spindly legs keeping him trapped. He shuddered. “And I'm not even normally scared of spiders!”

 

**in miles**

_ There were some issues with the port authorities, and we had to move the Starblaster. Sorry. _

Merle stared at the note scribbled down in Lucretia’s neat handwriting. Beneath the message was a set of directions leading to the Starblaster's new location, somewhere a few miles from the dock he was currently standing on.

“What does it say?” Lup asked, reaching down to pluck the note from his hands.

“The lady said I'd get paid if I gave the note to you,” the human girl said, standing impatiently to the side. “You  _ are _ Lup and Merle, right?”

“Yeah, we are. Hold your horses,” Merle grumbled, reluctantly searching his pockets for some coins. Not only did his crew leave him behind, they made him pay actual money for that particular privilege.

“Figured you were,” the girl said, tapping her foot on the ground. “There aren’t lots of people here who match your descriptions.”

“Here you go,” Merle said, dropping the money into the girl’s open hand. “Now get lost.”

The girl obeyed, scampering off into the crowd.

“They couldn’t have waited an extra hour for us to come back?” Lup muttered. “What was so important?”

Merle shrugged, looking up to give the now empty dock one last annoyed look before sticking his hands in his pockets and strolling off.

In a few long strides, Lup caught up to him. They walked up the docks, back towards the city, and past a couple of blocks before she finally broke the silence. “So... no luck with the Light, I assume?”

Merle shook his head. “Nada. Not a hint.”

“Yeah, same,” Lup said with a sigh. “I think we’re going to have to move on to somewhere else to search for any sightings.”

Merle snorted. “If our crew doesn’t move on without us again first.” He wasn’t too upset—they probably had a good reason for ditching him and Lup—but he wasn’t looking forward to the miles-long trek ahead of him right after he had spent a full day of walking around the city.

A dry smile tugged on Lup’s lips. “I wonder why they had to leave so fast. We did get official mayoral permission to stay here this time.”

“Maybe someone saw Fisher and spooked,” Merle suggested.

“Maybe Davenport set something on fire,” Lup said, smirking ironically. They both knew that, of the IPRE, the order of most to least likely to set something on fire started with Lup and ended with Davenport.

“No, they probably mistook Barry for a fugitive.” Merle shook his head in exaggerated sadness. “Such a shame, he just has one of those faces, you know?”

Lup snorted. “Well, regardless, they totally owe us for this.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Merle said, grinning as an idea sprung into his mind. “I wouldn’t object to giving them some payback.”

Lup’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, prank war!”

“It’s about time we had one,” Merle agreed. Frankly, he was astonished that between Taako, Magnus, and Lup, there hadn’t already been about ten of them. “Maybe next time, we should be the ones to stay behind with the ship and move it somewhere hidden nearby without telling them. Let them spend the next few hours looking for it.”

“It’s a good start,” Lup said. “Makes it very clear what this is about. But we’ll need more than just that.”

“It’s a good thing we have so much time to plan while we walk back,” Merle said, feeling a bit smug that the inconvenience the others had made them suffer through would end up being their undoing.

“Absolutely.” Lup grinned in mischievous delight. “They won’t know what hit them.”

 

**in laughter**

With a skillful dive, Davenport barely avoided the wave of whipped cream that exploded down the hall of the Starblaster. In the distance, he could hear Taako screech in laughter as Lup furiously shouted curses. 

Too tired to deal with either of them, Davenport ignored both and resolutely flung open the door of his cabin, shutting it firmly closed behind him. 

This was exactly why prank wars had been banned decades before, when the first and only attempt at one broke out. It had ended up being so awful for everyone involved that the crew had all decided never to do it again. Unfortunately it had been in one of the cycles Merle was killed early in his chats with John, and Lup was not one to follow rules when she had a reason to break them, so the two had no problem restarting the prank war, despite the precedent. Then once the two of them began attacking the rest of the crew, it was impossible to keep them from retaliating.

At first, the sides were firmly defined: Lup and Merle against everyone else. Then Taako had tried to get revenge on Magnus for their competition at the start of the cycle, and everything else devolved into chaos. While this meant that Lup and Merle were no longer targeting him in particular, Davenport got caught in the crossfire every time he tried to leave his cabin.

This had to come to a stop. The only difficulty lay in figuring out how.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. Davenport contemplated ignoring it and pretending he wasn’t there, but that could lead to worse repercussions, so he turned back to the door with a sigh and opened it a crack.

Through the small opening, he could see a sliver of Barry’s face. “Can I come in?”

Davenport eyed him warily.

“It’s not a trick or a set up,” Barry promised, raising his hands reassuringly. “I swear on the Light of Creation.”

Since Davenport had gotten to know him, he had discovered that Barry had many hidden talents and traits, but Barry had never shown himself to be a particularly good liar. Davenport reluctantly let him in.

As he opened the door wider, he noticed that Barry was not alone. Behind him stood Magnus, hovering uncertainly in the background. Davenport sighed but held the door open for him too.

Once the door was safely closed again, Davenport asked, “What’s going on?”

“Hear me out,” Barry said, which was never a good way for a conversation to start. “I have the perfect idea for a prank, but I need two other peop—” 

“No,” Davenport said immediately. “I’m not getting involved in this.”

“Come on!” Magnus said. “It’ll be fun!”

Davenport raised a skeptical eyebrow. The prank itself might be amusing enough, but the retaliation from the other end would not be. “Find someone else.”

“We need someone who can make illusions for this to work,” Barry cut in. Before Davenport could protest, he quickly added, “Look, if you help us, Magnus and I’ll help you bring this prank war to an end.”

Davenport did the math. With almost half the crew on his side—more if Barry could convince Lup to join them or at least stay neutral—he would have a far higher chance of successfully putting an end to this. “Fine. But just one prank.”

Barry smirked, and Magnus grinned, his eyes lighting up in delight. “This is going to be  _ lit _ .”

Feeling a bit more worried than he had previously been, Davenport sighed and settled down to listen to Barry outline his plan.

The general idea was not an especially innovative or complicated one, but to make everything work, a dozen different things had to be planned and set up. Davenport landed the Starblaster near a small town that would hopefully occupy the crew for a little while with their world-renowned ski resorts.

It took them a full day to brainstorm and gather everything they needed and then set it all up. Davenport cast his illusions and set the trap. He and Barry lay in wait as Magnus ran off to fetch the crew with a story of how he, Barry, and Davenport had been ambushed by some monster in a small cave nearby.

A few minutes later, Magnus arrived with the other four behind him.

The idea behind this prank, Barry explained, had come from a “haunted house” he had visited a few cycles back. It used magic and other tricks to scare the people who entered. Those people had known what they were getting into, unlike the victims of this prank, but otherwise it was fairly similar.

It was easy enough for Davenport to create the illusions of some eerie moaning and faint wisps of light that disappeared anytime someone looked at them too closely. Meanwhile, Barry worked in the background doing physical tricks, including dumping a bucket of spiders on top of all of them. After this had gone on for some time, Davenport let the scent of sulphur creep into the cave, the signal for the final stage of the trick.

“Hey, what’s in here?” Magnus loudly asked as he stepped into a particularly ominous-looking cavern. Everyone turned to look, but before anyone could do or say anything else, Davenport cast a spell to create lots of blinding light originating from Magnus, then an invisibility spell. When the light faded away a second later, nothing was left but the echo of Magnus’s screams.

Someone let out a small shriek, and he could have sworn that Taako jumped an entire foot into the air. 

“What was that?!” Lucretia squeaked.

Then from somewhere above, the sound of Barry’s laughter echoed through the cavern. The other IPRE members froze.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” Lup demanded.

The gig was up, so Davenport vanished all his illusions and the three of them revealed themselves to everybody else. There was a grin tugging at the ends of his lips, even though he knew gloating didn’t make things better with the victims of a prank. He couldn’t help himself.

“I fucking  _ knew _ your screams were fake, Magnus!” Lup scoffed, as if she hadn’t been wide-eyed in terror moments before. “They were way too dramatic.”

“I hate every single one of you,” Lucretia muttered, burying her head in her hands.

Barry and Magnus were clutching each other in laughter, and after looking at everybody’s murderous expressions once more, Davenport had the urge to join them. “You were right,” he told them. “This fooled them pretty good.”

 

**in strife**

Magnus had never valued his life all that much. He didn't  _ want _ to die, but he simply never thought he was very important compared to the trillions of other things that existed in all the universes.

During these cycles, his life had become both more and less worth protecting. On one hand, he knew he would always come back, making death nothing more than an uncomfortable experience. On the other, he had a family counting on him being there to protect them. He had a baby voidfish to feed and play with and care for. If things went bad, the existence of the entire multiverse might hinge on his survival.

It was a weird situation, but Magnus had a lifetime to figure out exactly where he stood with that, how much he would risk his life in any given circumstance. By this point he had it well handled. 

So when Lucretia, Merle and him were attacked by giant bats while exploring a random cave, Magnus didn’t stand his ground.

While making sure that the other two were in front of them, Magnus rushed back the way they had come, his sword already drawn. Merle had cast magic on it so it would glow, since neither Magnus nor Lucretia had night vision, but currently it was bouncing up and down too much to give a clear view of the path ahead.

“It’s no use!” Merle shouted between pants. “We can’t go this way, remember? It’s blocked up!”

“Shit,” Magnus muttered, slowing to a halt. They were going to have to find another way out, but he didn't know if there was any that didn't involve going through the bats.

“We can’t turn back now,” Lucretia said. “Merle, maybe you and I could move the rocks out of the way with magic.”

“But—” Merle started.

Magnus pushed them both down the hall. “Go, I’ll keep the bats away.”

“Be careful,” Lucretia called back as she dragged Merle off down the cave.

Magnus squared his shoulders, hands firmly gripped on his sword as he faced his foes. He did not seek out death, but he would do anything to keep his family safe.

His thoughts darted to Merle, with his gruff affection and all his plants and his skewed sense of humor. He was all bumbling foolishness until he revealed his true nature and opened up a person’s soul with a few words or cast a spell that saved them all. He was support in the roughest times and fond annoyance in the rest.

And there was Lucretia, her shy kindness forged to deadly steel. She was books and grandiose dramatics and the kind of fierceness that was all the stronger for having been timid for so long. She was the one who noticed every stumble and never failed to offer a hand without any trace of judgement.

These were the people that Magnus would face any foe for, a thousand times over, without hesitation. With the reminder of his bonds to them fresh in his mind, filling him with strength, he rushed into the fray.

 

**journeys to plan**

When Lucretia came down to the common room of the Starblaster, it was still early enough in the morning that she didn’t expect anyone else to be there. As much she enjoyed the noise and energy her family brought this place in the waking hours, she also loved the peace of these quiet mornings when everyone was still asleep.

To her surprise, however, the common room was not empty. Davenport sat on the floor, staring at a large map in front of him. In one hand, he had a pencil; in the other was a notepad. Even at a distance, Lucretia could tell it was covered with writing.

“What’s that?” she asked quietly, so as not to startle him.

Davenport looked up at her then turned back to his work. “Merle got this map in the last town we visited. It shows all the major cities and landmarks on this planet. I’m figuring out where we should go next.”

Sitting down next to him, Lucretia studied the map. A large chunk of it had been lightly scribbled out with pencil, presumably the part of the world that they knew the Light couldn’t have fallen in because they were watching it during the interval that it should have happened. Across the remainder of the map were several large Xs striking out the cities and towns they had been to, along with a few smaller ones marking the less populated areas they had visited.

“The villagers we talked to described seeing something that may have fallen in this area.” He gestured at one of the large mountain ranges which had been circled.

Quite a few cities had been crossed out on one side of it, where they had spent the last few weeks searching. Because of the mountains blocking the view of the sky, none of the people they had talked to in those places had been able to confirm the original villagers’ sighting.

Barry had been working on calculating the angles to narrow down where the Light could have fallen. Davenport had highlighted the areas Barry had crossed off in blue, but there was still over half of the region that was unmarked.

“We still have four months left in this cycle,” Davenport said, “but I would prefer to find the Light as efficiently as possible.”

Lucretia stared at the map a little longer, glancing at the elevation key in the corner. “This town is on top of a mountain.” She pointed at a dot within the circled region. “If anything fell in this area, they must have seen it. They’re high enough to be above any fog.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Davenport said, looking up to smile at her. “It’s a ways from where we are, so what if we stop here on our way there? They have a slightly different vantage point.” The city he pointed out was set on another mountain, facing a different angle than the town she had pointed out.

“Sounds good,” Lucretia said. It would probably take them less than a week to get through both towns. “And what if we don’t hear anything about the Light from either place?”

“Well, this city is known for being a trading post. We could talk to people from all over the area,” Davenport said. He circled the three cities they had discussed, numbering each of them in order.

Lucretia shifted her legs into a more comfortable position as she prepared to plan the best course of action. “Right, but if you want efficiency...” she began, her mind already whirling away at calculating distances and population size and a dozen other factors. With their combined strategic skills, they were bound to find the Light soon.

 

**in truths that she learned**

It was remarkably easy, Lup discovered, to put something off when you had all the time in the world.

As an elf, Lup had always had a long lifespan, even before this journey, but that wasn’t always true about the people she interacted with. There were many things she had to confront sooner than she wanted to, just because if she didn’t, the other person might grow old and die in the meantime. Besides, she could be killed just as easily as any other species, and for a long time in her life, that was a very real threat.

Now every person she cared deeply for was just as likely to live forever as she was, and that made procrastinating personal conversations a very tempting thing to do.

Still, they had to happen eventually, especially now that their journey had a chance of ending soon. 

Barry had been left behind at some city a while ago, and last month, Taako, Magnus, and Merle went off to explore a giant cave system together. With only three people remaining on board, the Starblaster had been fairly quiet. It seemed like a good time to confront Lucretia.

For the past few years, Lucretia had been avoiding her. Lup didn’t know exactly when it started, but their argument about the best way to defeat the Hunger seemed like a likely option. There weren’t any other reasons Lup could think of, even though she thought that Lucretia’s avoidance might have started earlier than that. 

All Lup really knew was that she absolutely hated it. Lucretia was one of the nicest and most sensible people she knew (though compared to Taako, Magnus, Merle, and even Barry, that wasn’t a difficult feat), and their conversations were always something to look forward to. Over the decades of their endless journey, they had grown quite close, and Lup now deeply missed spending time with her.

Determined to get to the bottom of it, Lup got up early one morning to wait in the kitchen for Lucretia to grab her morning coffee. It didn’t take long for Lucretia to appear.

“Good morning,” Lucretia said, barely looking up as she entered.

“Morning,” Lup echoed. From her position leaning against the wall, she watched Lucretia get her coffee ready without bothering to attempt any conversation with her. Lucretia was using one of the magically reheating mugs Lup had gotten in the cycle before, she noticed, feeling pleased at the fact.

After another minute of this, Lup decided it was time to speak before her staring got too creepy. “Are you angry with me?”

Lucretia looked up in surprise. “What? Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“You’ve been making an effort to always be somewhere I’m not. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” Lup asked. 

Lucretia looked away. 

“Is it because we rejected your plan to deal with the Hunger? Because I never meant—I had hoped that our relationship was not so flimsy that it could be torn apart by difference in opinion.”

“You think I hate you?” Lucretia asked, eyes firmly locked onto the fantasy coffee machine in front of her. “I would  _ never _ . It—It’s quite the opposite, actually. Very opposite. I like you. A  _ lot. _ I started avoiding you when I realized what was happening because I didn’t want to make things complicated. Between you and Barry. Because I was falling in—because I liked you that way.” She began speaking quicker, the words clumsily falling out of her mouth. “I mean—I. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

Lup stared wide eyed at Lucretia who finally glanced up. Lup couldn’t quite make her thoughts coherent enough to say anything that would make sense.

“...what?” was all Lup could manage. This had come so out of the blue that Lup, who prided herself on never being taken off guard, felt dumbfounded.

With a soft shake of the head, Lucretia looked away again and fled, leaving her unfinished coffee behind.

For a long time, Lup stared at the spot Lucretia had once stood, her heartbeat feeling weird and somehow stilted. She had uncovered the truth about Lucretia, just like she had intended to. Lucretia  _ liked _ her. Romantically. Or at least Lup was pretty sure that was what Lucretia was trying to say.

And... Lup couldn't figure out how she felt about that. She wasn't uncomfortable like she had been in the past when people she was friends with showed interest in her in this way.

Lucretia was very hot, her mind supplied, but Lup brushed the thought away. Thinking someone was hot didn't necessarily mean you wanted to date them, after all.

If anything, Lup felt almost happy, her heart a little lighter. And maybe it could be blamed on the fact that she now knew her close friend wasn't upset with her, but Lup had been around long enough to recognize returned affection when she saw it. Maybe her feelings for Lucretia  _ were _ more than vague sexual attraction.

Which didn't mean she wanted to think about it though. Nothing seemed to make sense, and Lup didn’t even how to start reacting to this new information. 

Lup finally pushed herself off the wall she was leaning on, and vowed not to think anymore of the matter until she was in a state of mind to properly process it. Not that it would stop her errant thoughts, but she could try.

 

**or in times that he cried**

Cave systems were fun and all, but the moment Magnus discovered an entrance leading to a city known as this world’s center of theater, he decided that it was time to hopefully learn a new skill and get out of that awful, dark, cramped, spider-infested place. 

If Taako and Merle were fine with continuing their exploration, that was good for them, but Magnus was done. He was out of there.

The one setback with his plan was that, as it turned out, Magnus was actually sort of a terrible actor. Nobody would hire him, and with the industry being as competitive as it was, nobody was willing to put in the time to teach him unless he paid exorbitant fees. Fortunately, Magnus was not one to let small failures bring him down, and he found that was  _ very _ good at set design and crafting props. 

All day, he built contraptions that made people look like they were flying, or carved chairs that would belong in an underwater palace, or anything else that was needed. Then at night, he watched the performances. There were enough productions going on that he could see a different one every night for months and still not have seen them all.

Every single one of them seemed amazing to Magnus, each telling a story in a different way, some with humor, some with music, some with death, some with love, some with all of the above. Each one was an experience Magnus hoped to remember forever, even though he knew that memory didn’t work like that.

So when Lup showed up one day, looking like she needed a distraction from some troubling thoughts, Magnus knew exactly what to do.

“Let’s go to the theatre!” he said, pronouncing the last word with a strange, sort of upper class accent.

“Okay, sure. Why not?” Lup said flatly with a shrug, barely even looking at him. “Which one?”

“Hmm...” Magnus said, stroking his chin. “I mean there’s so many, it’s hard to choose. I could probably make a flowchart and you could—”

“Well, what’s the best one you’ve seen so far?” Lup interrupted with a sigh.

Magnus looked at her, offended. “You wouldn’t ask me to rank my children, would you?! Besides, why would I rewatch something when there’s a hundred new things to see?”

“Then what looks good?” she asked, without even the hint of argument in her voice.

Out of all the IPRE, Magnus thought Lup was the one he had spent the least amount of time with, but he had still been close to her for over a human lifetime. He knew that something was off in the half-distracted way she responded to his conversation. 

“What about _ The Flaming Arrow _ ?” Magnus had heard good reviews of it, and a fast-paced, emotionally powerful adventure story that was guaranteed to bring tears and laughter seemed like a good place to start.

“I do like fire,” Lup mused, and that had been that.

Only Magnus had apparently miscalculated the ratio of tears and goofs this show would have because halfway through the second act, the main character’s wife died right before the two of them could make up after a petty fight, and Magnus found himself uncontrollably sobbing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lup eyeing him uncertainly. “You good?” she whispered.

Magnus didn’t bother responding, dabbing at his eyes with his already soaked sleeve.

“Okay, fine, here you go,” Lup muttered quietly with a sigh, and Magnus wasn’t sure what she was talking about until she passed him a handkerchief.

He gratefully blew his nose, earning him a couple of glares from the people around him, as if they were any less affected. Magnus had a sensitive soul that was easily moved by performances such as this. It wasn’t his fault that tears were streaming down his cheek and snot was dribbling out of his nose. Even Lup’s eyes were glimmering with unshed tears in the light from the stage.

Once it was over, Magnus and Lup stood outside in the cool night air, processing the performance they saw.

“You were really bawling your eyes out there, Mags,” Lup said, amusement in her voice. “And it was all for naught, since her wife turned out to actually still be alive.”

“I knew that ahead of time!” Magnus said, feeling a little embarrassed in the way that people did when their emotionally vulnerable moments were pointed out to them. “I did read the summary in the program. It just hit me hard for some reason.”

“At least you don’t have to worry about losing anyone you really care about anytime soon,” Lup said, even though they both knew that Magnus loved freely. His heart had been broken many times during this journey, whether it was losing a new friend, a pet, or even a place he had come to love.

“How long are you in town?” Magnus asked instead of lingering on that thread of conversation. “I know some other shows I think you might enjoy.”

“Thanks for the offer,” Lup said. “But that play—well, the seven of us have all the time in the world, don’t we? But that doesn’t mean we don’t change. Especially with our plan to defeat the Hunger and everything. I don’t want to be like that one person if her wife hadn’t come back. I don’t want to leave things unresolved. Maybe there’s such thing as too much waiting, even for us. I've got to talk to Barry about something.”

“I don’t really know what you’re talking about,” Magnus said. “But you got this!” He held his hand up for an encouraging high five.

“Thanks, Mangus,” Lup said, slapping his hand. “I’ll see you around.”

 

**in bridges he burned**

When Merle and Taako set out to explore the cave system, they weren’t looking to find the Light. It simply seemed like an interesting place, with traces of ancient civilizations buried deep beneath the mountains. But as their luck would have it, just when they stopped looking for it, that was when they found another sign of it.

One of the tunnels had led out to a small village on the top of one of the craggy mountains. Objectively speaking, it was one of the nicest places Merle had ever been. All the people were extremely friendly, offering them everything the travelers needed, including a description of the star-like thing that had fallen just over the ridge ten months ago.

“But I wouldn’t try to find it there now,” the leader added. “We went down to see what it was, and when we arrived, some people from the city were already there. When they left, it was gone.”

It was still the best lead they had, and since they still had another two months to track down whoever had taken it, Merle wasn’t too worried. He was perfectly content to sit back for another day or two, enjoying the fine food and company.

Everything was perfect, so of course it just had to be too good to last.

“Seriously?!” Taako demanded, staring at the piles of bones and huge swaths of spiderweb all around him. This had been the one building in the entire village that the two of them had been banned from entering, so in the middle of the night, they snuck into it to see what it was all about.

“I guess that’s why this village hasn’t had many visitors recently,” Merle said with a sigh. “And I was just going to try out that mud bath thing at their spa too!” He was very curious to find out how getting super dirty was supposed to be relaxing.

“Right,” Taako said, already halfway back out the door. “We’re getting out of here before we meet the same fate as them.”

“Good thing Magnus didn’t end coming here with us, with all the spiderwebs,” Merle commented as he shut the door behind him as carefully as he could. Taako was no longer close enough to hear him, being all the way across the street. “Where are you going? The caves are that way!”

“If you think I’m going into a cave when there are giant spiders involved, you have another thing coming,” Taako hissed. “The bridge is over there!”

Being so high up, the village was almost inaccessible from the outside world, except for one sturdy wooden bridge. The villagers had blamed their isolation on how hard it was to get there, claiming that it was the reason they were so happy to see Taako and Merle. Now he was starting to suspect other reasons.

Merle ran as fast as his short legs would let him. He was an endurance runner, not a speed one, but discovering a bunch of dead bodies sure was a good motivator.

Taako had just stepped past the last house in the village when suddenly alarm bells started going off. He grumbled something that Merle couldn’t hear and glanced behind him. “You’ve got to go faster than that!”

“I can’t!” Merle snapped, keeping a wary eye on the houses nearest to him for any sign of people waking up. He had been hoping that after his conversations with John ended, he would stop dying so much, but luck did not seem to be on his side this cycle. Hopefully Taako would be able to make it back to the others with news of the Light. “You try running fast when you’re an old dwarf!”

Sighing loudly, Taako stopped and turned around. With a wave of his wand, a spectral unicorn with rainbow colors appeared. He grabbed Merle and with a bit of straining, plopped him onto the unicorn. 

“Yooooooo,” the unicorn said in a deep voice.

Taako only barely managed to pull himself on when the first door opened, the village leader stepping out.

“Is something the matter? Why are you leaving so soon?” she called out, her face showing nothing but concern.

“So you’re  _ not  _ responsible for all those dead bodies in your village hall?” Merle demanded, trying to help pull Taako up.

She laughed nervously. “Whaaat? We don’t—”

“Enough talk,” Taako muttered, urging the unicorn forward as he swung his leg around the other side of the unicorn. Startled by the sudden motion, Merle almost fell off, dragging Taako down with him. Distracted by trying to get a good hold on the unicorn’s neck, he missed the village leader’s transformation.

When he looked back, there was a giant spider where the leader had been, a half-dozen more crawling out of the nearby houses.

Merle decided that looking behind him would not be good for his peace of mind, so he turned back to the front, focusing only on holding on to the unicorn. He really did not want to fall off now. Rocks and tufts of plant material passed beneath him as Merle clung for dear life. The bridge was just ahead of them.

“They’re catching up!” Taako shouted. “How are they so fucking fast? Spiders are ambush predators!”

“Don’t worry,” Merle said. “I’ve got a plan!”

“Well now I’m really scared,” Taako muttered, almost too quietly to hear.

Hoofs clattered across wooden boards for a long minute before they switched to the sharper sound of cartilage on stone.

Merle looked back, casting Divine Flame on the bridge. A small fire started up in the middle. He cursed; it was supposed to have been big enough to stop the spider villagers from following them, but they could just crawl around this fire without much trouble.

“I gotchu covered,” Taako said, and suddenly the fire expanded, engulfing the whole bridge with crackling flame.

“That’s one metaphorically resonant escape,” Merle commented, ignoring the flood of relief he could feel travelling down his limbs.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Taako muttered.

 

**or the way that she died**

In the past nine or so decades, Taako had seen his sister die over a dozen times. The knowledge that she would come back at the start of the next cycle only helped so much, even after she had her lich form to hang around in for the rest of the year.

Just because her death was temporary didn’t mean it was any less painful, and Taako hated to see Lup hurting at all. He had died fewer times than her, but he still knew that even the fastest and cleanest of deaths were an experience worth avoiding if at all possible.

And this one was not fast or clean by any means.

The person who found the Light of Creation had not been willing to give it up when Taako and Lup came to get it. No amount of logical reasoning had swayed him, and when they tried to physically intimidate him, that only caused him to attack.

The man wasn’t a fighter or trained in magic like they were, so they expected the fight to be over quickly. They hadn’t counted on all the defenses a collector of powerful and valuable items would surround himself with.

With the Light clutched to his chest, the collector darted out of the room they had met him in. As Taako and Lup turned to follow him, umbra staff outstretched in Lup’s hand, the doors of the room slammed shut. Taako heard the click of a lock, but that didn’t stop him from trying to open the door. It remained firmly closed.

“Nice try!” the collector shouted smugly through the steel doors. “But I’m better prepared than that!”

Before Taako had the chance to shout a witty reply, something whizzed past his ear and splattered against the door, liquid dripping out from where it struck.

“Enchanted acid!” the collector explained. “Only works on flesh. Good luck beating that!” He let out a little cackle before loud footsteps raced away, fading into the distance.

“I hate this guy,” Lup growled as she opened up her umbrella and used it to block the acid pellets from hitting either of them, its ridiculous form coming in handy for once.

“You and me both,” Taako said. Trusting Lup to keep them both covered, he threw every spell he could think of at the door, but it remained just as solid and locked. “Here, let’s switch. Maybe you’ll have more luck with this than me.”

“Okay,” Lup said, trying to manoeuver herself around so that the umbrella shielded both of them while they switched positions.

Taako had just barely grabbed the handle of the umbra staff when he heard a soft “Shit” behind him. He whirled around to see Lup wide-eyed, staring at her shoulder where one of the acid pellets had struck.

“Lup! Are you okay?” he asked.

She grimaced. “It hurts like hell, and I’m pretty sure that it’s spreading.” She pulled them both down away from the door and into a corner so that the umbrella could almost completely cover them.

“I could—” Taako started, even though he didn’t know what he actually could do. If they could just get out of there, Merle could heal her, and everything would be fine. They just needed out first.

“No,” Lup cut him off, shaking her head. “Look, I was thinking, and I could just float through the door when I become a lich and chase after the guy.”

“The acid’s deadly?” Taako asked.

“Probably,” Lup said, shifting her jacket to show him her shoulder. It was almost completely gone by now, and her arm seemed a few seconds away from falling off. The edge of her neck was starting to steam and dissolve.

Taako fought the urge to throw up. Lup must have been hiding her pain better than he thought. “Okay... This is... not looking great.” He didn’t think he could bear to see the rest of her dissolve like this, and he didn’t think she would want to live through that either. This left only one other option, but Taako didn’t like it any better.

“Yeah, I’d appreciate it if you sped along the process,” Lup said, which was exactly what Taako didn’t want to hear. Noticing his hesitancy, she rolled her eyes as irritatedly as she could manage while her face was tight with pain. “It’s not like I’m  _ going _ anywhere. Fucking coward.”

Taako knew her death was a temporary thing, and he knew that he would be saving her a great deal of pain, but every instinct from when they had been mortal was screaming that he couldn’t kill his sister. 

He raised his wand, swallowing back the surge of fear that wondered what if somehow this was the last cycle? “Yeah, you wish,” he muttered, casting the spell.

Lup’s body collapsed on top of his legs while her lich form floated upwards. She waved jauntily at him then dove through the wall, leaving Taako with her empty body, slowly melting away. Despite the casual attitude for death all of them had adopted during these long decades, he couldn’t help but feel he had still done something unforgivable.

 

**measure in love**

Each year, the Hunger came closer to catching the IPRE, learning from its mistakes each time it failed. Its attacks were getting stronger, quicker, and more accurate.

This cycle was no different.

Since Lup was the only one that had died this time, all seven of them were on board the Starblaster as Davenport flew it into the air.

Barry clung to the railing of the deck so he wouldn't lose his balance. All around him, he could see the columns of black matter strike close to the ship. There were a dozen times where it seemed like the nearly century-long mission might be ended for good. But Barry was never afraid. His trust in Davenport was absolute.

“Hey!” Magnus shouted from his position on the back of the deck. “Some help here?!”

Barry turned to look, spotting a strange Hunger-corrupted eight-legged humanoid hissing at all of them. Before he could react, Lup shot a powerful bolt of fire from her Umbra Staff, and Magnus used his sword to knock it off the ship. It was a smooth maneuver, their skills developed over decades of fighting alongside each other.  Barry quickly turned his attention back to his section of the ship to magically shove away part of a tendril that had gotten too close.

“Hey guys?” Lucretia shouted from where she was standing next to Lup. “I think it’s time!”

“Okay!” Barry said, kneeling down to open a case at his feet with one hand. Lucretia bent down to do the same.

“What’s that?” Merle asked, looking between Barry and Lucretia with interest.

“A bomb,” Lucretia said. “For the Hunger.”

“Ooh can I set it off?”

“Merle,” Lup said very seriously. “This thing’s a very powerful explosive that Creesh and Barry and I have spent an entire month working together on. One wrong move and this ship could blow itself to pieces.” Then she grinned broadly. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting anyone but me light it up!”

“But I get to throw them at the Hunger, right?” Magnus said. “I have a proficiency in throwing things!”

“Of course you do,” Taako muttered. He had been more subdued for the last part of the cycle, not even volunteering to work on the bomb like Barry thought he would. It had given Barry, Lup, and Lucretia more time to figure out exactly how their relationship was going to work, but Barry still felt concerned for Taako.

“No, we got this,” Barry said. He tossed his piece into air, quickly pulling out his wand to keep it afloat, adjusting its position so it was in line with the piece Lucretia had thrown off the edge.

“That’s cheating!” Magnus complained. “You know I can’t use magic!”

Barry ignored him, watching the two parts of the bomb grow smaller and smaller as the Starblaster soared away from them. Soon, they would be far enough away to safely explode them.

“Okay,” Lup said, readying a fireball in her hand. “Three, two, one, let’s go!”

From the corner of his eye, Barry could see Lucretia swinging her wand towards Barry’s piece of the bomb, just as he did the same for hers. Lup shot her fireball directly at the two pieces, and in one instant all three components collided.

There wasn’t even a millisecond to doubt whether or not their plan had worked. One moment, they were sending their own parts of the bomb towards each others’; the next moment, an entire column of the Hunger was on fire.

Barry let out a loud yell of delight, only to discover his voice seemed to have multiplied by six. He looked around to see Magnus jumping up and down, Lup pumping her fist in the air, Lucretia laughing uncontrollably, Merle doing a victory dance, and even Taako grinning a bit. All of them cheered as the column collapsed into ash.

“What the hell was that?” Davenport’s voice boomed from inside the cockpit, setting the rest of them into giggles. Through the back window, Barry could see Davenport turn around to face them for just an instant, his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Give me some warning next time!”

Still flooded with adrenaline and the joy of a plan well-executed, Barry couldn’t stop smiling. He looked around at his family, all of them celebrating this win, as small as it was in the grand scheme of things.

Things were getting hard lately, with each escape more difficult than the last, and the end of their journey looming over them like a tower of fear and hope. It was nice to have this reminder that they weren’t powerless to fight against the Hunger. It was nice to be reminded that all seven of them were still capable of unfiltered delight.

These were the people Barry would live and die a thousand times for, and he was suddenly overcome with the sense of boundless affection.

The Starblaster put on a burst of speed as it flew into their 99th planar system, and Barry knew that it was probably just Davenport stepping on the gas, but part of him imagined that it was actually the bond engine responding to the sheer amount love pouring through his every vein.

**Author's Note:**

> There’s a bit of gore in the section “or the way that she died.” I don’t think it’s much worse than canon, but if that’s not your thing, skip the paragraph starting with “‘Probably’, Lup said.”


End file.
